In a letter released by the committee Thursday morning, Reps. Lamar Smith (R-TX) and Steven Palazzo (R-MS), the chairmen of the full science committee and its space subcommittee respectively, asked NASA administrator Charles Bolden for details about reports that both SLS and Orion were in danger of missing the planned December 2017 launch date for EM-1, the first SLS/Orion mission. The letter does not mention the KDP-C review that NASA announced Wednesday, but an earlier GAO report on SLS cost and schedule risks and recent comments by Orion program manager Mark Geyer that he will be “challenged” to make that December 2017 date.

In the letter, Smith and Palazzo suggest that NASA and the Obama Administration have not properly funded SLS/Orion development. “The Administration continues to submit insufficient budget requests for these vital programs,” they write. “Despite numerous statements over several years that these two national priority programs are sufficiently funded, it now appears that this may not be the case.”

Smith and Palazzo pose several questions to Bolden in the letter, including, “Will NASA be able to fly the SLS for Exploration Mission-1 in calendar year 2017?” If NASA isn’t able to, they ask what’s changed since previous testimony to the committee, including whether Bolden knew about the slip when he testified before the committee in March. (It’s worth noting that, in his prepared statement to the committee in March, Bolden said that “NASA is pressing forward with development of SLS and Orion, preparing for a first, uncrewed mission in FY 2018.” While that would include December 2017, fiscal year 2018 runs until September 30, 2018.)

“In fact,” Smith and Palazzo write, “despite NASA’s best efforts to keep these programs on track, it appears as though the Administration is starving these programs of funding and preventing important development work with the goal of pushing back schedules.” They seek responses to their questions from NASA by September 10.

131 comments to House members seek details on SLS/Orion schedules and spending

There ain’t no bigger pork than the ISS and the Obama administration’s attempt to continue NASA’s perpetual mission to LEO!

NASA hasn’t been beyond LEO since 1972, 42 years ago. And during that time, NASA has spent more than $210 billion– in today’s dollars on crewed LEO programs, dwarfing that of NASA’s beyond LEO Apollo program that cost less than $140 billion in today’s dollars according to President Obama’s own Augustine Commission.

I am on record with various op eds during the decision run up to ISS and then the initial build of the station saying just that. the problem is 1) that money is spent and 2) the station now exist.

it would be incoherent federal policy to have spent all that money and have the station “in orbit” then to say 1) lets get rid of it and 2) try another station (or another big project)

the “thing” to do is to try and make something useful for ISS even if something useful is initially not sufficient to justify the value of the entire program/project…in large measure this is just competent management…but to another it is the realization that NOthING in human spaceflight is worth the initial investment in it. and that includes your lunar base.

“it would be incoherent federal policy to have spent all that money and have the station “in orbit” then to say 1) lets get rid of it and 2) try another station (or another big project”

That’s like saying that Ford should have never moved beyond the Model T after all of the money spent developing it. The ISS has been continuously occupied since the year 2000 and should have been designated to end after 2015. Now the Obama administration is trying to extend it beyond the year 2000. Extending the life of this hyper expensive LEO program beyond 20 years is a waste of tax payer dollars.

For NASA to send humans to other planets, they’re going to need to test habitats that are water shielded from cosmic radiation and major solar events while also being able to rotate in order to produce artificial gravity or be large enough to internally accommodate hypergravity centrifuges to help to mitigate the deleterious effects of microgravity on the human body.

Both the SLS derived Skylab II space stations would be large enough to internally accommodate hypergravity centrifuges. They could be launched to LEO by the SLS before the end of the decade to test the hypergravity centrifuge. A Skylab II could be launched to EML1 in 2021 to test its ability to shield astronauts from cosmic radiation and major solar events (about 50 cm of water would be required).

Of course, you don’t really need such habitats if you really don’t want NASA to have a beyond LEO program!

ISS had a centrifuge project that would have contributed fundamentally to our medical knowledge about human response to gravity. That was going to be flyable on ISS, but it was cancelled. Don’t need another space station to do the needed experiments. Just need to deploy the original experiment.

You keep blathering about using a BEO habitat to test radiation shielding for astronauts. Over and over. I keep reminding you that this is a profoundly dumb idea. Radiation opacity is a property that is measureable perfectly well in the laboratory, with sensitive instruments that don’t die if they get too much of it. You can have tests about in-space shield deployment and construction, but you sure don’t need human beings inside to test it.

The best estimates are that unshielded humans outside of LEO will have their life expectancies reduced by 10-30% after a year of radiation. So what does your experiment look like? Send fifty people up there and see how many die after ten years? Sheesh.

You realize we are trapped with Putin, a modern day Adolph Hitler, on the ISS? The program is obviously finished. Within a month the US will be funneling heavy weapons into Ukraine to be used on our partners, the Russians. Will that be enough to halt the ISS program? I’m amazed people still cling to their 1990’s internationalist fantasies.

“You realize we are trapped with Putin, a modern day Adolph Hitler, on the ISS? ”

Funny, that.

You realize that Adolph Hitler was (perhaps indirectly) responsible for perhaps the boldest moves in rocket propulsion, leading to present-day space exploration. Our Apollo program would have gotten nowhere without the wisdom he cultivated. At least he did one thing right.

In fact, the ISS was first conceived at the time that the Soviets were invading Afghanistan. President Carter called that invasion “the most serious threat to the peace since the Second World War.” Of course, the U.S. was then aiding the Mujahideen movement there, which opposed the Soviets. The point being that cooperation on ISS has been largely independent of small-scale international conflicts that had the U.S. and the Russians on opposing sides, and was considered important diplomatic outreach from both sides.

If the ISS program is “obviously finished”, then I guess the U.S. won’t be sending any humans into space for a couple of years. That would finish off HSF in the U.S. pretty much entirely.

That being said, I’m amazed that people still cling to their Cold War fantasies.

I don’t blame Werner Von Braun for Hitler’s actions. The German rocket engineers turned out to be fine Americans, especially compared to the refuse we import today. What an absurd argument, even for you. A long hiatus in US spaceflight is the obvious and unavoidable result of the carnival of poor decisions made by Obama’s NASA.

I was just talking about Nazis in the context of space flight, and their relevance to ISS which you first brought up. Of course, Putin himself is now calling the Ukrainians “Nazis”. Take that! So “Nazi” and “Hitler” are useful names when we’re blathering about things we don’t like that we can’t really explain cogently.

By the way, the German rocket engineers turned out to be fine Americans, especially those who hid their previous efforts in the concentration camps. Fine Americans indeed. Von Braun himself had been accused of crimes to humanity.
You want to talk more about refuse?

This is all somewhat off-topic, and apologies to Jeff for that, but calling people names is not a constructive contribution to space policy discussion.

The ISS is a LEO program. The SLS is a beyond LEO program. Over 40 years of NASA focusing on LEO is about enough. Let private industry exploit LEO for private interest (microgravity research and space tourism). NASA needs to move on!

The ISS is a National Laboratory whose goal is to solve the problems keeping us from living and working in space – and not just LEO.

The SLS is a rocket, not an exploration program. The goal is to build a rocket with a capacity to LEO of at least 70mt and up to 130mt. What it moves to LEO, or beyond, is not part of the SLS development program.

And apparently you forget that every piece of hardware that has truly gone BEO (i.e. left Earth local space) has done so on less-then HLV sized rockets. Yet we don’t call them “BEO rockets”, just rockets. And rockets could care less what they carry…

But based on the paucity of payloads for the SLS, it looks like it will even be a stretch to call it an “operational” rocket, and will probably just end up being a museum piece whose plaque will say “Tested twice successfully, but cancelled for lack of need”.

Rand, when something or someone cannot stand by themselves they either readily compare themselves to others (“I am a Reagan Republican”) or a situation to another (“the Chinese are going to take over the moon”) or well compare bad people and groups to other bad people and groups.

In the end the SLS fiasco is because the Space Industrial complex cheerleaders are on both a “beat the Chinese to the Moon” and “we need another Apollo” which is again comparisons of something that cannot stand on its own to something else.

it doesnt take a genius of history to recognize that today there are no threats to the world on the order of the short guy with a mustache, unless one is trying to make one. Just as there is no impetus to having another US Apollo project, unless one is trying to make one RGO

That bulk of that Apollo budget was spent over the course of just a few years. The 210 billion spent over 42 years represents a freakin HUGE cut in resources for NASA. What NASA could achieve, even with a MASSIVE pork premium, was only possible with a massive starting budget of 4.5% of the Federal spending.

For what you are constantly pushing, NASA would need 150 billion a year. It is not happening. The sooner NASA makes the transition, the faster the pork premium will get stripped out and NASA can start acting like other agencies.

Obama’s Augustine Commission estimated that the Constellation program would cost around $98 billion by the time it placed the first humans on the Moon. The annual development cost for the Constellation program were going to be over $6 billion.

The Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) estimated that the annual recurring cost for a lunar outpost program would cost less than $8 billion year– if everything, including water and air had to be exported from Earth.

And during the height of the Apollo develop program, NASA’s highest annual budget, in today’s dollars, was over $33 billion and during the last two missions to the Moon, its annual cost was less than $16 billion in today’s dollars.

“NASA hasn’t been beyond LEO since 1972, 42 years ago. And during that time, NASA has spent more than $210 billion– in today’s dollars on crewed LEO programs, dwarfing that of NASA’s beyond LEO Apollo program that cost less than $140 billion in today’s dollars according to President Obama’s own Augustine Commission.”

Got news for you. Those $210 billion taught us vastly more about what we need to do to reach out into deep space than Apollo did. Apollo wasn’t even about reaching out into deep space. It was about showing up the Soviets. It succeeded admirably in that.

It will be interesting to see the good Congresspersons’ reaction if Administrator Bolden announces that the delays are due to bureaucratic issues – in other words, meetings of managers taking longer and producing fewer decisions. Perhaps rounding off by saying: “All more money would do is give these groups more budget to spend on listening to each other talk.”

KDP-E, Flight Readiness and EM-1 all happen after the 2016 election. So I think we will burn money on SLS/Orion until sometime between KDP-D and KDP-E. It will depend heavily on the state of the economy and if they can justify pork for all.

The sad thing is that Congress is punishing NASA and blaming the Administration for doing the right thing for once. This is the first time in the history of NASA’s human space flight program that confidence levels have been used to determine a major project’s delivery date. And instead of supporting the agency for being halfway honest for once about what it’s going to take to finish a human space flight project, the House authorizers are making political hay out of healthy, objective, relatively hard-nosed cost analysis. No good deed goes unpunished.

(Or course, the likelihood that Congress will significantly increase the SLS budget over multiple years to bring the schedule back to the left, or that an increase in the SLS budget will fix MPCV for EM-1, is nil.)

It’s also disingenuous, to say the least, for an arm of Congress to blame the White House for SLS funding when the legislators hold the power of the purse. High school civics students know this for crissakes.

Congress: “So wha’s up NASA? Can’t do the job with no money?”
NASA: “Job? What job? We have slides for you! We can even build a Sidemount vehicle!!!”
Congress: “Yeah! That’s a good idea! Why don’t you change all and build a Sidemount?!”
NASA: “Sidemount does not work, we tried that lunacy before”
Congress: “Okay great do it!”
NASA: “Do what?”
Congress: “Now that we fixed the SLS/MPCV. Tell us. Why is Obama taking that much vacation? Oh yeah and what about those Global Warming fanatics?”
NASA: “Say what?”
Congress: “Can we invade the Moon before the Chinese? Where the heck is Wolf?”
NASA: “We don’t have a rocket to go to the Moon, except Falcon 9″.
Congress: “Okay then get on with Monaco, it’s ours! After all Their Princess was US!!!. Go for it”.

Both Democrats and Republicans in Congress know that the Obama administration has been trying to undermine and underfund the development of the SLS right from the start. That’s why Congress keeps callin’ them out on this over and over and over again!

The Obama administration never wanted a heavy lift vehicle nor a beyond LEO program. Even before he became President, Obama argued that he’d rather spend NASA beyond LEO funds on social programs. At least Lori Garver admitted that she thought the SLS should be canceled once she left the administration– which is probably what Obama and Holdren also believe.

They’re not foolin’ anybody!

Unfortunately, the administration’s anti-beyond LEO antics have also undermined full financial support for their Commercial Crew development LEO program in Congress.

Ah ha ha ha. Most of these links are the Republican Congress grousing about SLS. They’re the ones that can’t put the money in the budget to fund it. So they want to deftly blame someone else for SLS not having the money it needs.

A better challenge would be to show us what the administration has done to delay the SLS, coming from those who haven’t actually been more responsible for the delay themselves, and are just trying to pass off the blame on someone else.

Yep, what the administration has done to make SLS behind schedule is to sign Appprops bills. For shame.

I certainly don’t think the Obama administration ever wanted a heavy lift vehicle. What made you think that? At least one developed at mammoth cost by the federal government. As to a program beyond LEO, the Obama administration wants one, but tried to get Congress to fund a technology development program that would do it in a cost-effective way. Congress cut that proposed technology development program to shreds. Of course, cost-effectiveness is not what space district legislators are after. They want to do it in the most expensive possible way, such that dollars come raining down on their districts. Somewhat perversely, they can’t seem to manage to appropriate the funds they so desperately desire, but need an Administration to propose such expenditures to they can approve the approps bill with faux-reluctance and blame it on the White House.

Marcel the Obama administration wanting or not wanting a heavy lift vehicle doesnt change the reality that the only thing that has been funded at full up amounts has been SLS/ORION…and you cannot state a single thing that the Obama administration has done as a notion of executive decisions which has slowed SLS/Orion down, other then allow NASA to build it…and while I admit that alone allows NASA to bring its unqiue brand of competence to the program and is doing for it, what it has done for everything else since the shuttle…

That is hardly the fault of the administration.

Blaming SLS slow/overpriced/under performing on Obama is like blaming F-35 on him as well.

“Unfortunately, the administration’s anti-beyond LEO antics have also undermined full financial support for their Commercial Crew development LEO program in Congress.”

That’s a stretch. CC development was to be well funded in the budget proposal by the Administration, and Congress docked it. Take a bow, Congress. The only “antics” that undermined CC were those of Congress.

Marcel, how many times has President Obama threatened the House and Senate that he was going to veto any bill that provides MORE funding for SLS?

Please provide a link for the quote or the video where the President has made the veto threat.

Please provide the links for the House and Senate funding bills for the SLS that provided MORE funding and that funding increase was thwarted by the President ..

Put up .. or FINALLY .. shut up about how THIS President controls ANY aspect of the Republican, just say no to everything, house of representatives and the minority Republican ‘just fillibuster everything’ Senate.

This President has absolutely no power to enforce anything… He is to the point of governing by executive order because NOTHING of his gets through congress.

I provided the links. Read them! The President presented budgets that attempted to reduce SLS funding– claiming that the SLS would still being appropriately funded at lower levels. The Senate called him out on it! That’s just the facts. And I watched the hearings and the lame excuses from the administration.

Both Democrats and Republicans have been hostile towards Obama’s space policies. And so have the overwhelming majority of NASA astronauts. President Obama and Holdren have very little interest in a beyond LEO program for NASA. And pretending that they do is just a fantasy!

The President presents a NON BINDING budget.. get that through you head. It absolutely doesn’t matter what the President puts in a budget. Especially with the congress he has been delt.

So the Senate called him out on it and the house .. so? Did they increase funds for the SLS? Give all the funding it needed? What EXACTLY stopped the congress from funding the SLS at ANY level they chose?

Please show the links were the President threated to VETO any spending about his budget request?

Funny how little some folks know about how their government works. Not knowing that Congress write the spending bills, and the President can only approve them or veto them…

But they have to ignore reality in order to pretend that Obama is the one to blame for perceived funding shortfalls – they can’t blame Congress, since otherwise they have no hope that Congress will actually take an interesting in funding something useful for the SLS to do.

And regardless what politicians say, it only matters what they do, and the loud message they have sent so far is that they are OK with sort of funding the SLS, but don’t care about actually using it.

7 years until the SLS is supposed to be operational. Time is running out…

When a BI PARTISAN congress, refused to fund the CONstellation program was that “Both Democrats and Republicans have been hostile towards Obama’s space policies”?

The GAO is saying, along with Booz Allen and some members of congress, that the SLS program is going to be under funded and needs more funding.

Why hasn’t all these congression members that you say are all so pro space, not calling for HUGE increases in NASA funding? Why Marcel? Is the President calling the shots for the republicans in the house?

It should be pointed out here that from what I’ve heard SLS itself on schedule. Orion on the other hand is both overweight (for reentry not launch) and using a 10 year old design that has been rendered obsolete by newer SpaceX, Sierra Nevada Corp, and Boeing spacecraft. Also ESA, which is building Orion’s Service Module, also needs more time. As such a decision is expected soon to postpone the first launch of SLS/Orion to September 2018 to give the Orion program more time to resolve its issues.

Keep in mind please that NASA/humanity will be using these rockets and spacecraft for the next thirty years at least for missions in both low Earth Orbit (LEO) and beyond. A year’s delay in the grand scheme of things does not matter that much in my opinion.

“A year’s delay in the grand scheme of things does not matter that much in my opinion.”

Someone should tell that to Palazzo and Smith in House Science. They’re the ones that are upset about the delays, and blaming those delays firmly on the Administration. In fact, the 2010 NASA authorization bill that started the whole SLS mess posed a “goal” for completion of 2016, but never gave any justification for a time limit. If the authorizers needed SLS to be done by a certain time then they should have said it then.

Michoud facility in New Orleans, La has begun production of SLS. Three cores are in production: They the Static Test Article (STA) for testing at Marshall, the Ground Test Article (GTA) for testing at Stennis, and the Flight Test Article (FTA) for flight at Kennedy.

“…but I will listen to the engineers and program mangers working on SLS day after day…”

The engineers have no clue what the total costs of the program are. No clue at all because it’s not their job to have that type of information.

Program managers would know, but since NASA is a government agency that works for the President but must answer to Congress, NASA will say whatever makes the most political sense for them to say. And that is the same in every agency, not just NASA.

“…over some auditor every-time.”

You think program managers have an incentive to be honest? I’m not sure you’ve ever worked with a program manager before.

The GAO is the only government entity that can be trusted, if such a thing exists in our government. Their charter is to be non-biased, and to just report the facts as they discerned them to be. If you don’t like the facts, then don’t shoot the messenger.

Of all the agencies in the federal government, which agency, has been the poster child, for the last TWENTY YEARS as the agency MOST LIKELY to bust their budgets and never come in on schedule.

Make a WILD guess, Chaz, which agency do you believe is the absolutely, most likely to do that?

Did you say NASA?

So the agency that breaks the most budgets, kills the most schedules THAT is what you are going to take to the bank .. that agency.

“The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) plans to invest billions of dollars in the coming years to explore space, understand Earth’s environment, and conduct aeronautics research. GAO has designated NASA’s acquisition management as high risk in view of NASA’s history of persistent cost growth and schedule slippage in the majority of its major projects. GAO’s work has identified a number of causal factors, including antiquated financial management systems, poor cost estimating, and underestimating risks associated with the development of its major systems. This area was added to GAO’s High Risk List in 1990.”

“Of all the agencies in the federal government, which agency, has been the poster child, for the last TWENTY YEARS as the agency MOST LIKELY to bust their budgets and never come in on schedule.”

In all fairness, you could ask which agency is tasked with doing things that are at the technological cutting edge.

In all fairness, you really ought to include DOD. F-35 overruns and schedule busting far exceed that of SLS.

That being the case, it still is remarkable how unforgiving Congress is about NASA cost overruns. Congress looks at buying NASA projects like it looks at buying a car off the lot. That being the case, Congress ought to take cost estimation for such ambitious plans with a big grain of salt. The idea that we’ll have a technology-straining mega-launcher in 7.00 years for a promised amount of cash is just nuts. Apollo could promise such a product at a given time because it was promised a very flexible and uncapped budget. If you want to make delivery date promises for cutting edge technology items, you’re going to pay dearly for it. Get used to it.

So the bottom line is that SLS isn’t on schedule. So what? Who are we trying to beat? The congressional GOP wants to use that fact to beat on the administration, deftly avoiding their ownership of the problem. That beating is a lot easier than coming up with a rationale for SLS, which is a subject that Congress doesn’t want to touch with a ten foot pole.

I could be more forgiving in certain areas, probles for the most part. But human spaceflight? forget it, since Apollo ended it has been a barrel of pork for congressional members representing NASA centers.

I guess their ADD is a symptom of congressional FDD (fiscal deficit disorder). You can give a lot of attention to a project that is starving for money, but that’s not going to make it go any faster. Congress provides neither enough dollars nor policy leadership for human space flight. No surprise that the White House wants to wash their hands of it. Yep, Congress wants an SLS and MPCV, but won’t tell anyone what they’re going to use them for, except as vehicles for spending loads of federal dollars.

Although I’m certainly no fan of the Orion, you’re still going to need a capsule with a heat shield capable of dealing with the high frictional velocities of traveling from lunar orbit or from a Lagrange point through the Earth’s atmosphere. None of the commercial vehicles being developed would have the appropriate amount of heat shielding. But the Orion is clearly going to be the most overly expensive capsule in the history of the universe. There really should be a Congressional investigation as to why this capsule cost so much, IMO.

The Constellation philosophy of using a heavy lift vehicle– only as a cargo vehicle– should have been adopted for the SLS program. The Orion money could have spent on developing a reusable lunar landing vehicle that could also be used as an orbital transfer vehicle. Commercial crew vehicles could then be used to shuttle astronauts from Earth to the orbital transfer vehicle.

Elon Musk has stated publicly that the Dragon V2’s heat shield is designed for Mars return already. SLS (or 2 Falcon Heavy rockets) could lift the service module and all the rest of what is needed, and then Dragon V2 could dock with all of it and head off to Mars. Dragon is smaller than Orion, but just make the service module a bit bigger.

Yes. Got a problem with that? The problem with the 9R had absolutely nothing to do with vertical landing. It was a sensor failure, that in this comparatively primitive craft, had no backup system. So they did the safe thing and self-destroyed it.

See Marcel. I understand not every one needs to be an ED&L specialist but this sentence “a capsule with a heat shield capable of dealing with the high frictional velocities”. I believe you should at least make an effort to understand what you are trying to say after so many years in this anyway. Understanding the physics of what you are trying to accomplish even at 1st order will help you understand why most of what you are trying to accomplish never will.

Why do you constantly do this Marcel .. you know damn well that PICA-X is enough .. you have been told and posted links on it for freakin’ years… but here you go .. repeating the same tired nonsense “gosh I didn’t know that” your puppet dance is getting so old.

SpaceX chose PICA for its proven ability. In January 2006, NASA’s Stardust sample capsule returned using a PICA heat shield and set the record for the fastest reentry speed of a spacecraft into Earth’s atmosphere — experiencing speeds of 28,900 miles per hour.

NASA made its expertise and specialized facilities available to SpaceX as the company designed, developed and qualified the 3.6 meter PICA-X shield it in less than 4 years at a fraction of the cost NASA had budgeted for the effort. The result is the most advanced heat shield ever to fly. It can potentially be used hundreds of times for Earth orbit reentry with only minor degradation each time — as proven on this flight — and can even withstand the much higher heat of a moon or Mars velocity reentry.”

Keep in mind please that NASA/humanity will be using these rockets and spacecraft for the next thirty years at least for missions in both low Earth Orbit (LEO) and beyond. A year’s delay in the grand scheme of things does not matter that much in my opinion.

The decades of using the same launch systemfor thirty years for any kind of mission have been over for a few years now. That is a completely unrealistic assumption, especially for an expendable rocket of the cost and size of the SLS. It’s done over.

Really, on what do you base this assumption? The Russian Soyuz (R-7) rocket has been in use for over fifty years and could serve for fifty more. The American Centaur upper stage has been in service since at least the early to mid sixty’s and is still used today as the second stage of the Atlas 5. And the Space Shuttle’s served for thirty years and could have served for many more years before their space frames reached End-of-Life (EOL)

Also we do not know how much SLS will cost to operate. NASA, Boeing, and ATK (along with SpaceX) are reinventing the “wheel” of how rockets are produced and operated. This is being done to lower the cost of spaceflight and make it affordable. Give them a chance to prove the new “wheel” works.

I base this on the demonstrable facts that SpaceX has produced major revisions of both their launcher and engine in three years flat, has proposed a triple core version using a brand new cross feed capability that is close to flying, and has already successfully demonstrated actual safe landing of the booster on a wavy liquid surface (the ocean).

Not only that, they have embarked on a new much larger engine development project using a entirely different fuel and a new engine cycle (full flow gas generator staged combustion, or some variant yet to be determined). You just can’t make this stuff up.

We know how much NASA (as in the US government, as in you) has sunk into the development of the SLS. Tens of billions of dollars and a full decade. And it has not yet flown. And now you are proposing to continue to build and fly it which will take another decade and another tens of billions of dollars based upon flimsy evidence. NASA, Boeing and ATK already knows how the new wheel works. It works with large clusters of multiple much smaller liquid engines, scaled up to much larger clusters of much larger liquid engines and vehicle cores. Since they do not seem to be able to produce these products, they have elected to milk the predetermined SLS for everything that it’s worth before literally being forced to upgrade their products, or possibly giving up on the new commercial reusable launch vehicle industry completely. Unless they can find a new smaller methane or hydrogen engine supplier or embark on building one or more themselves, this is probably the inevitable conclusion.

The shuttle was cancelled for precisely these same reasons. It cost too much and was deemed unsafe. However, when Bush cancelled the SLI these people offered possible reusable engine and launch vehicle designs in the twenty billion dollar range, and congress immediately declared these costs wholly unacceptable, and then immediately blew that same amount in a decade on an expendable system that never even launched, and will require another twenty billion dollars and a decade to reach that capability.

I am not surprised at this result in the least bit and predicted this would happen. What I did not predict was that is would happen twice in a row over a full decade.

“NASA/humanity will be using these rockets and spacecraft for the next thirty years”

Its more likely that NASA/humanity wont be able to do a real planetary mission for another thirty years-remember manned Mars landing sometime after the 2030s (I wonder if I’ll make it to 95). NASA has no need for the Orion as its redundant with either Dragon or CST, and even then its questionable why anyone would want a throwaway Mars mission. There is a lot missing that is needed: the long duration hab, the lander, a sortie vehicle….NASA hasn’t thought any of this out and is focusing on things, wasting money and time on things that are not needed.

“NASA has no need for the Orion as its redundant with either Dragon or CST”

This is debatable. Dragon as it exists today is useful only for Low Earth Orbit (LEO) Ops. It would require a significant redesign to go further. At the very least the heat shield would require a substantial upgrade.

“and even then its questionable why anyone would want a throwaway Mars mission”

Throwaway? Everything I’ve heard out of NASA over the last year is that except for the rocket and Orion’s Service Module everything launched into space for Human Spaceflight will stay up there and e reused by future crews.

“There is a lot missing that is needed: the long duration hab, the lander, a sortie vehicle….NASA hasn’t thought any of this out and is focusing on things, wasting money and time on things that are not needed.”

The long duration hub is being worked on, just quietly as there is no official funding for it. I had heard early last year that NASA had requested funding for such a hub from the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) but they chose to request money from Congress for the Asteroid Redirect Mission instead. Lander technology is being worked on, look up Project Morpheus. Please define sortie vehicle. You mean a rover?

NASA is thinking these things thru and plenty more. You would not believe the amount of R&D going on at NASA right now. It is all part of the very complicated jigsaw puzzle of going Beyond Low Earth Orbit (BLEO) for the first time in forty plus years and doing so in a way that is sustainable and affordable. That takes time.

Okay Chaz I hate to do that to you but do you really believe what you write?

“Dragon as it exists today is useful only for Low Earth Orbit (LEO) Ops. It would require a significant redesign to go further. At the very least the heat shield would require a substantial upgrade.”

Absolutely false. Dragon would require as it stands today the proper ECLSS and some form of an SM. And that’s about it.

“Everything I’ve heard out of NASA over the last year is that except for the rocket and Orion’s Service Module everything launched into space for Human Spaceflight will stay up there and e reused by future crews.”

What?!?!?! “Except for the rocket and Orion”? Really so let’s waste what $4 billion for each launch and that is okay according to you. Furthermore the rest of your statement is plain wrong.

“The long duration hub is being worked on, just quietly as there is no official funding for it.”

What???? Really!?? Well it is illegal to work on something without budget. So NASA is working, illegally, on vaporwear? Really?

“I had heard early last year that NASA had requested funding for such a hub from the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) but they chose to request money from Congress for the Asteroid Redirect Mission instead.”

OMB provides money for NASA? You are not really serious now are you.

“NASA is thinking these things thru and plenty more. You would not believe the amount of R&D going on at NASA right now. It is all part of the very complicated jigsaw puzzle of going Beyond Low Earth Orbit (BLEO) for the first time in forty plus years and doing so in a way that is sustainable and affordable. That takes time.”

Going BLEO as you put it is not complicated whatsoever especially the Moon and vicinity. This is a huge pile of nonsense. And no there is no R&D being done at NASA on these topics since there is no budget to address any of that. Any significant enough budget.

It seems to me you are not very serious. You need to do a lot more research and then come back with links and numbers because all this is is “tinkerbell” talk. Sorry.

There is a lot missing that is needed: the long duration hab, the lander, a sortie vehicle….NASA hasn’t thought any of this out and is focusing on things, wasting money and time on things that are not needed.

Au contraire, there is considerable evidence that NASA has thought it out, concluded that the necessary missing things can’t be afforded on projected budgets, and is trying to put the best face on what it has been forced to do by Congress, i.e. SLS/Orion. Perhaps they’re hoping that more money will be available in the future.

…NASA has thought it out, concluded that the necessary missing things can’t be afforded on projected budgets, and is trying to put the best face on what it has been forced to do by Congress, i.e. SLS/Orion. Perhaps they’re hoping that more money will be available in the future.

I think that’s exactly what’s going on. But I would add that NASA is a big agency and they are plenty of people in it that luv SLS like a big giant fussy teddy bear from their childhood. Which, for some of them, it probably sort of is.

What “I” find amazing is that anyone is “shocked” that another big ticket NASA program (or two of them) is floundering…it is not like NASA has a solid track record of doing these programs well or even defining them well…

What will be interesting to see is how the politics of all this develop. particularly in the 16 presidential campaign. there is a populist streak (or maybe two fo them ) forming in the US RGO

Well, for an editor of “nasaspaceflight.com”, maybe it hurts a bit when space flight isn’t NASA. There are a bunch of space flight blogs/websites that are nasa-this and nasa-that, as if NASA is as meaningful as it used to be with regard to spaceflight. In fact, that’s an interesting piece of astro-psychology, that space flight had come to be synonymous with NASA. I’m in no way being critical of the agency or these websites. Just that NASA is not as much of a space flight leader and flag carrier as it used to be. There are some who find that fact simply intolerable.

The country will be “lucky” to get to Falcon 9 heavy and it work…there are two things maybe three at play

First SpaceX has got to get their flight rate up. The company cannot survive on the prices it is charging with a flight rate that it has right now. More over if they do not get their flight rate up, which means the ability to point and shoot there will be no market available for “1 a week” on a resuable first stage (or the Falcon 9H) BECAUSE the shift in cost has to fuel a shift in satellite cost which will then bring a wider market.

Second there is no money and its unlikely to develop anytime soon for the cost even a “cheap” outside Earth orbit effort requires. Lets say with better launch cost and Bigelow modules on a SpaceX style contract we could get a lunar base for 8 for say 1/10th of the Station…thats 2X billion …and that might be possible when SpaceX (or if) they get their launch cost “down” but right now thats not possible. It is ludicrious to even think that the US government is going to have money for a 10 billion dollar worth payload for SLS every two years…not to mention the launch cost.

Third…the technology for a “long trip” is still somewhere in the future.

In the end the best that we can hope for, and should insist on , is the development of a space industry that drives 1) launch cost down and 2) space operations cost down. SLS and Orion go the other direction.

SpaceX seem to be moving along OK at getting their flight rate up. There was only a short gap between the Orb Com launch and SES 8 and they were on a 22 day turn around for SES 6 before F9R-Dev 1 failed.
When you look at the historical ramp up of Atlas V flight rate the F9 flight rate seems to be doing OK.(much better than Atlas did). LV customers will be well aware of how long it takes to really ramp up a new LV and won’t be disappointed at SpaceX’s progress. i.e. 6 launches in the last 12 months. Nor will they be upset at SpaceX calling a stand down to review corner cases in their software. Better safe than sorry.
2nd point about costs of BEO. It all depends on SpaceX getting reusability. That’s the big unknown. SpaceX needs to make reusability work to allow any sort of future BEO. SLS isn’t going to do it. Besides I think it’s fair to discount SLS because even if they get it launched the projected flight rate is so slow as to be meaningless.
Point 3. Long trip technology. That is a big catch. But if SpaceX can achieve reusability and you have cheap reusable F9s and Dragons and a cheap reusable in space stage based on a Raptor powered upper stage (Which I think where SpaceX is really going with its Raptor engine) then you have the basis to go anywhere. Private companies could well fill in the gaps with ECLSS and shielding technologies quite rapidly. Especially if the first targets are lunar exploration where the demands are relatively simple.
Bottom lione. I think there is hope.
If SpaceX can drop prices and Bigelow can attract customers then there’s a really good market that will potentially open flood gates.

“Note that for some odd reason most anyone else in the space business is curiously exempt from this ridiculous fight.”

XCOR, Scaled/Virgin, Sierra Nevada,some parts of Boeing (X-37, CST) and others have ideas which are basically competitive with SLS/Orion. They just aren’t as noticable as SoaceX. The frontrunner naturally gets the flac. If the FH comes on line soon it just may change Congress’ view of SLS.

As to NASASpaceFlight.com, on the plus side there’s a lot there. On the minus side they quashed my conversation on potential collaboration with China without explanation after a mere seven replies.

I have had several of my posts there deleted for what appeared to me to be no adequate reason. I let my subscription to L2 lapse and don’t intend to participate there again. I don’t recommend that site unless you’re willing to put up with a great deal of nonsense. That “night gator” poster made it a unpleasant experience for me. It just wasn’t worth it.

I think you need to cut the guys on NASASpaceflight.com some slack. A lot of them are hampered by conventional wisdom. They ‘know’ what Musk is doing in impossible. Just as serious scientists all knew that heavier than air flight was impossible.
I was reading a post over there this morning and someone saidI hear people say, but it’s reusable so it will be cheap! Well, they haven’t reused even a single stage from an EELV class rocket, so that’s not proven yet. We literally don’t have the information to tell if that is cheaper yet.
Technically he’s right. But wow, it’s hard to think of something more expensive if it’s reused (maybe explosives?) while examples of things that are cheapen when reused leap to mind. Shoes, bikes, cars, planes, ipads, ships, roads, bridges, well just about anything really.
The ‘not proven yet’ argument is pendantic in the extreme but all to common among denizens of that site. Leave them to strain at their gnats and swallow their camels.

Reusable rockets – NASA’s Morpheus Lander has been reused several times. SpaceX’s single engine Dragonfly has also been reused several times. Now we just have to get them out of the Earth’s atmosphere.

Completely agree, Jim. Somebody recommended L2 to me. I paid money to join and expressed my opinion several times. One of my posts was deleted and took the Administrator to task only to be politely told it was “policy”. Subsequently, had a conversation with Chris Bergin, we agreed to part ways and had my money fully refunded. You can express any opinion you like on L2 so long as it’s Chris’s.

Hi Paul. I’m on L2 and have found that there’s minimal censorship provided one stays on topic. Of course, there’s mobs of non-SpaceX stuff on there that makes it worthwhile if you have a broad interest in space.
Cheers.

I know we’re really veering off topic here, but just wanted to say that I post regularly on NSF, and am on L2 too. I’ve also had a few posts deleted, but from what I can tell it’s was part of a trimming because a number of us had veered off topic (yes, Mr. Foust, I see the irony).

But though I originally thought I’d be one of the lone voices for SpaceX, it turns out that is no longer the situation, and there is a robust number of people that can talk rationally about SpaceX, as well as rationally about SLS and other topics (quite a few irrationally, but you can’t escape that).

“For more than 10 years, Foust also operated Space Politics, a Web-based blog devoted to space policy topics; his commercial space blog, NewSpace Journal, started more than eight years ago. The sites will no longer be updated, but their archives will remain available indefinitely.”

Neil and Ron, Don’t misunderstand me, I thought L2 was good. Before certain posts of mine were deleted by Chris, an administrator suggested that I alter the wording of one of my posts. I ignored the “suggestion” because my post conveyed exactly they way I felt on the subject. I don’t remember the wording now, but, it neither contained any bad language nor was it aggressive or abusive. Then I noticed that the administrator went ahead and changed the wording to some wishy washy, nondescript verbiage. I was peeved and that was how it all began. I viewed it as censorship and stated as much to the administrator, who apologised, and Chris Bergan, who was, IMO, recalcitrant. I like Jeff’s blogs. You/We can have robust discussions, like in Congress (on topic), with minimal interference from “he who must be obeyed”. Chris, IMO, could learn a lot from Jeff, but, probably never will.

The future of NASA and space exploration will be decided by who has the power to draw NASA budgets. The congressmen here just want to pull more money away from competing programs, while not being accused of spending more by anti-government spending constituents. These congressmen have no interest in space exploration, stunts, sustainable or otherwise. They have become defined by what they are against, trying to shut down climate science and grab those funds, using space exploration advocates as an excuse. Trying to end low Earth orbit funds like ISS is where the infighting among these otherwise likeminded and narrow interests in NASA, as just jobs, showed, by chance, an opportunity for new ways of thinking. This is the battle we are in.

Spending a little bit of time this Labor Day NOT laboring and catching up on some professional reading

There is a fascinating story in TheWeek (which I link on my facebook page for anyone who is interested) about some calculations that might be going on in China about the US military…and much the same thing could be said in my view about the US space program

the US space program which mirrors the country fairly well is, like the country exhausted not only in its notions of what it does, but what its role is…there is almost no thinking outside the box anymore and it is incapable of even executing “doctrine” thinking. SLS and Orion are in good examples of that.

but so is the notion that the signature effort of NASA with humans must be “exploration”

there are lots of reasons for this…none of them anything but troubling but…if you want to fear for the uture of the US as a superpower…RGO

like the country exhausted not only in its notions of what it does, but what its role is

The country isn’t exhausted so much as dazed and disappointed by a feckless political leadership that is. America has now gone years underperforming its economic potential. The prescription for reform is the same as it was when Reagan took office. End fed manipulation (raise interest rates), Reform the tax system, slash non-defense spending. Crank up military spending. Arm the enemies of Russia and China. Watch Russia and China slink back into their holes.

“… but so is the notion that the signature effort of NASA with humans must be ‘exploration’ ”

We should be careful here. The signature effort of NASA these days with humans is indeed space exploration, but just not with astronauts. We’re sending human inquisitiveness and curiosity across the solar system, putting the minds of our engineers and scientists in places where they could never go physically.

But then, what about astronauts? That’s where that old standard-bearer word “exploration” now fails dramatically. Fifty years ago, we couldn’t imagine that failure happening. But the spectacular development of robotics, telerobotics, and communication technologies made it happen. Welcome to the future.

As a result, the new NASA code word for a signature effort is “pioneering”. Several recent high-level essays coming out of HEOMD highlight that word. Yep, that’s a word that you just can’t do robotically. It implies colonization and settlement, and feeling the dirt in your toes. It’s a word that is immune to replacement by technology development. It’s a word that safely demands astronauts.

But here’s the rub. “Pioneering” is not a word that is used, or even hinted at, in the Space Act, which charters NASA. Of course, human space flight isn’t explicitly referred to there either. NASA, at least, isn’t chartered to do pioneering. So HEOMD is in the uncomfortable position of self-chartering.

So this country has to decide if our role in space really is “pioneering”, and if it is, then charter NASA to work towards it. Of course, “pioneering”, like “exploration” is a good-feeling word, sort of like “love” and “teamwork”. It just can’t be perceived as a bad thing. But like “love” and “teamwork”, it’s not clear that it’s something that our nation really should be investing in. Whether it is something that Elon Musk wants to invest in is up to him. I think it would be marvelous if he did.

Sean O’Keefe did ‘Pioneering the Future’ in 2002, so the word has been around NASA a while. If you do search on the NASA website for pioneering you find it used a lot, mainly for pioneering people involved in the space program who are now deceased.http://www.nasa.gov/about/highlights/Pioneering.html

For more than 10 years, Foust also operated Space Politics, a Web-based blog devoted to space policy topics; his commercial space blog, NewSpace Journal, started more than eight years ago. The sites will no longer be updated, but their archives will remain available indefinitely.

The responses to ARM always serve as as Rorsarch tests clearly showing different space enthusiasts desires.

“Any defensible calculation of tangible, quantifiable benefits – spinoff technologies,attraction of talent to scientific careers, scientific knowledge, and so on – is unlikely to ever demonstrate a positive return on the massive investments required by human spaceflight.”

This does not hold true for planetary defense from asteroid and comet impact.

ARM is the first effort to tie manned spaceflight to planetary defense. After the $8 billion taken from the NASA budget for the Ares 1, it is a recovery attempt.

Thee key here is that ARM finances the NEO search, because every time money has been spent on search the realization has increased that the impact hazard is far greater than previously estimated.

Now your best impactor detection system is CAPS, which uses active detectors based on the Moon. CAPS gives you sustainable manned systems.

My guess is that China will try for manned Moon landing in 2020-2025, with a base (CAPS) to follow 2025-2030. While they still have to make any of those decisions, given the budget for their architecture and national desires, my guess is it will be a go.

ARM is probably the best way to keep the tech base in place while recovering from the Ares 1 fiasco.

What is amazing to me is that none of you have thought about using SpaceX tech to match a Chinese manned Moon effort 2020-2025.

As there is a back-contamination problem for manned Mars flight which needs to be cleared, 2035 looks likely as the earliest possible window.

I’m going to miss this site, Jeff’s blog and all you who offer a mix of facts and opinions about space, past, present and future. SpaceNews will benefit with Jeff’s style, and I’m looking forward trying to keep up.

This blog was started (or the archives go back to) the same month that the Vision for Space Exploration was released. It is now sadly fitting that the last two posts on this blog are still dealing with yet another, year-odd delay on yet another hyper-expensive, fragile, Shuttle-derived launch vehicle. Unbelievably, more than ten years and billions of taxpayer dollars later, the nation’s space exploration hopes are still hamstrung by the very kind of launch system that the VSE tried to avoid by directing NASA to shut down STS and leverage commercial providers. Too bad everyone from Griffin to Nelson couldn’t read for comprehension.

The more things change, the more they stay the same. Maybe some day, we will learn.

Until then — and until Mr. Foust gets a new blog rolling at SpaceNews — I’ll get my fix of civil human space flight dysfunction by rereading old rocketsandsuch.blogspot entries.

“This blog was started (or the archives go back to) the same month that the Vision for Space Exploration was released. It is now sadly fitting that the last two posts on this blog are still dealing with yet another, year-odd delay on yet another hyper-expensive, fragile, Shuttle-derived launch vehicle”

It is actually phenomenal that the uneducated, uninformed, cynical, blind space exploration know-nothings will no longer have a forum to bloviate on topics they have no zero expertise on and will have to find real jobs and not waste our time reading their myopic fantasies.

I’ve worked in space program oversight and management for going on two decades. I have advanced degrees in the field. Your background and expertise is in what?

“will no longer have a forum to bloviate on topics”

The record speaks for itself. We’ve spent over a decade pursuing Ares I/Orion and SLS/MPCV, and we’re no closer to a new civil human space flight system, forget an actual human space exploration mission, than we were in 2004. And SLS/MPCV just slipped another year.

That’s not “bloviating”. It’s just the facts.

“not waste our time reading their myopic fantasies.”

Where did I express any personal “fantasy”? And since when is expecting NASA and its political apparatus to be able to execute the first couple steps in the VSE and at least do what it did five decades ago “myopic”?

I’m sorry your STS religion is failing (yet again), but turn that anger in the right direction. I’m just the messenger.

Thanks for providing this blog where civil discourse was always the order of the day!

Oh my! I’m surprised I got that out with a straight face!

Serious Jeff, thanks for providing a thought provoking and lively forum for those of us interested in space exploration and the political maneuvering required to make it happen.
I now have Space News bookmarked and look forward to your articles.